Nordic Backpacking Trip

On our first backpacking trip of the summer, 16 of us headed out from the South Mineral Creek trail head and climbed into Ice Lake Basin.  On this overnight trip we had a wide range of ages, from 10 year olds to 16 year olds, well, and then us adults along for the ride.

With our packs all saddled up on our backs, we headed out of the trail head around 9:30am and started the trek up to the basin.  We had a few breaks along the way up, one at this really cool waterfall that flows over an old mine.  We had a blast playing in the water and checking out the view.

3 miles late we were searching for a good camp site in the lower basin.  We found a winner by a little creek and started the task of setting up our tents.  It looked like there was a really cool fire pit there, too bad for the fire ban as some s'mores would have tasted really good!!

After we got all the tents set up, we broke out lunch food of cheese, peanut butter, honey, nutella, and tortillas.  Once we were all fed it was time to strike up a nice game of capture the flag at 12,000 ft.  With some many awesome hiding sports and terrain features, the game lasted a few hours before we ended it in a draw and just tried to find each others flags without the worry about getting tagged.

For dinner Ivy cooked up an awesome meal of rice and lentils to put in tortilla wraps.  Nothing quite like the taste of good food while backpacking!  After dinner the fun and games continued with a hilarious game of charades.  The kids all split up into two groups and competed as teams until the score board was ruined by Rhode, who thought it looked like a great place to take a nap.

We woke up Sunday to beautifully clear skies and a great Father's day for those dads with us on the trip.  After Matt had about 9 esspresso's, it was time for us old men to wake up the kiddos and start cooking breakfast.  After all that business was done we headed out on a day hike up to Ice Lake.  

The view were gorgeous as the lake and sky were both almost the same color.  After spending some time taking photos and (for some) swimming, we split up into a few groups.  Some headed back down the same trail to camp, so looked for a "short cut", and some went for a ridge run across to Island Lake.

After we all got back to camp, we hung out and had some lunch as we packed up our stuff.  We had an awesome time camping in the basin and it was sad to pack up and start heading out.  On the way down, the kiddos booked it out and we were at the cars about an hour later and heading home.